Tetro

A ban­ner draped across an Argen­tine street is illu­mi­nat­ed by lamp­light. ​‘The wind sweeps the road,’ it reads, ​‘you can­not go back.’ It is a sen­ti­ment that will come to haunt Ange­lo and Ben­nie Tetroci­ni as they learn to put aside the bit­ter mem­o­ries of the past and embrace their future. But like so much in Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, these words are res­o­nant in the life of the direc­tor himself.

At times it has felt as though Cop­po­la will nev­er be allowed to escape his past. A giant of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma, he has become enshrined and entombed in his­to­ry, car­ry­ing the bur­den of genius for almost four decades.

He was 33-years-old in 1972. By the time he turned 40, he had changed the shape of Amer­i­can film­mak­ing. In less than a decade he pro­duced four of the defin­ing works of New Hol­ly­wood: The God­fa­ther and its sequel, The Con­ver­sa­tion and Apoc­a­lypse Now. Intel­li­gent, inno­v­a­tive and auda­cious, each too was unit­ed by an unflinch­ing com­mit­ment to the art of cin­e­ma, a reck­less pas­sion that took their direc­tor to the brink, and then beyond.

These were the years of accu­mu­la­tion – of knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence, of rep­u­ta­tion, mythol­o­gy, pow­er and wealth. Of an icon­ic sta­tus with­in the canon of Amer­i­can film that both insu­lat­ed and ener­vat­ed Cop­po­la in the years that followed.

As excess exhaust­ed the appetite, Cop­po­la became a self-inflict­ed casu­al­ty in the war between art and com­merce. Cre­ative­ly bereft and finan­cial­ly bank­rupt, by the ear­ly ​’90s he was no more than a stu­dio stiff for hire – a sac­cha­rine com­e­dy here, a legal pot-boil­er there – until final­ly enter­ing unof­fi­cial retirement.

At 71, Cop­po­la has under­gone a long and nec­es­sary trans­for­ma­tion – a peri­od of divest­ment to off­set the greedy acquis­i­tive­ness of suc­cess. The name, of course, remains and with it the shards of mem­o­ry and rep­u­ta­tion that con­nect him to the past. But as the direc­tor returns to film­mak­ing for only the sec­ond time in a decade, there is much that has been left behind.

The young man’s con­ceit has been replaced with a more mod­est ambi­tion; to return to the per­son­al film­mak­ing of his roots, to the inti­ma­cy of The Rain Peo­ple, made in 1969, when he was still a film­mak­er rather than a leg­end. Cop­po­la shot that film from the back of a van – a mobile film stu­dio that demand­ed inno­va­tion and flex­i­bil­i­ty. Now he’s re-embrac­ing that ethos of cre­ative free­dom, strip­ping away the com­plex­i­ty of the process in an effort to recap­ture some­thing real.

And in doing so, in doing what oth­er film­mak­ers of his gen­er­a­tion have promised but nev­er deliv­ered, in reject­ing the demands of suc­cess and the teth­ers of expec­ta­tion, Cop­po­la has been, if not re-born, then re-ener­gised – seduced once more by the roman­tic pos­si­bil­i­ty of cinema.

The result is Tetro, his first orig­i­nal screen­play since The Con­ver­sa­tion – a poet­ic dra­ma that evokes the great themes of fam­i­ly, rival­ry, deceit and betray­al but in a style and on a can­vas far removed from the director’s ear­li­er epic work. Tetro is Coppola’s best film in a gen­er­a­tion – low on bud­get, high on ideas, styl­is­ti­cal­ly bold and the­mat­i­cal­ly rich.

With its three-act struc­ture and nar­ra­tive dri­ve, Tetro may not be an art film per se, but with a del­i­ca­cy of con­struc­tion that belies pow­er­ful under­cur­rents of cri­sis and tragedy, it is evi­dence that a cin­e­mat­ic artist has final­ly returned to work – some­what ring-rusty though he may be.

In the film’s open­ing image a moth is attract­ed irre­sistibly to light, estab­lish­ing a cur­rent of inex­orable self-destruc­tion that will illu­mi­nate the film as haunt­ed writer Ange­lo Tetroci­ni (Vin­cent Gal­lo) – a ​‘genius with­out the accom­plish­ments’ – strug­gles to rec­on­cile him­self to the betray­als of his family.

The prog­e­ny of artists – his father is the great com­pos­er Car­lo Tetroci­ni; his moth­er an opera singer and famous beau­ty killed in a car acci­dent with her son at the wheel – Tetro has crossed the world to escape his past, fetch­ing up in an Argen­tine asy­lum, his unpub­lished life sto­ry clutched to his chest.

But the sto­ry lacks an end­ing, one that will be pro­vid­ed by his half-broth­er, Ben­nie (Alden Ehren­re­ich), who has come to Buenos Aires to con­front the sib­ling who aban­doned him and fill in the blanks that have dis­rupt­ed the nar­ra­tive of his own life.

Ben­nie finds Tetro liv­ing with his girl­friend, Miran­da (Mari­bel Verdú), in a small apart­ment in a bohemi­an quar­ter of the city. Here Tetro has carved a rep­u­ta­tion as an unruly writer; the kind of man who will start a fight over the ques­tion of whether lan­guage is dead. Tetro is a wound­ed ani­mal hob­bling on a crutch, but where the cast on his leg will be removed, Bennie’s vis­it reopens emo­tion­al fis­sures that will take longer to heal.

And as Ben­nie delves into the secrets of his brother’s life and work, he too will be left irrev­o­ca­bly changed by the expe­ri­ence, even as he unlocks his own cre­ative voice and offers Tetro an end­ing to both their stories.

This dynam­ic – the shared jour­ney of a sophis­ti­cate and an inno­cent – may echo The Rain Peo­ple, but Tetro is a more intrigu­ing and stylised piece of work. Shoot­ing in gor­geous shades of liq­uid black and white, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Mihai Malaimare Jr ampli­fies the romance and poet­ry of the South Amer­i­can land­scapes, from the street-front cafés of Buenos Aires to the moun­tain­ous back­drop of Patagonia.

It is Coppola’s first film in mono­chrome since 1983’s Rum­ble Fish, anoth­er sto­ry about broth­ers and fam­i­ly secrets. But where that film had a mus­cu­lar tex­ture, the high-con­trast pho­tog­ra­phy of Tetro – influ­enced by the work of Anto­nioni and Kuro­sawa – is more poignant­ly beau­ti­ful and atmos­pher­ic. Indeed, the film is more suc­cess­ful as a mood piece than a dra­ma, with its stun­ning com­po­si­tions that cap­ture the spir­it of the city.

Coppola’s bold­est gam­bit sees the film switch to colour at key moments, where, as the emo­tion­al dra­ma crescen­dos, the tra­di­tion­al lan­guage of cin­e­ma fails, just as words have desert­ed Tetro at the cli­max of his play. Instead, inspired by Pow­ell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoff­man, Cop­po­la segues into an impres­sion­is­tic bal­let to cre­ate a cin­e­ma of pure spectacle.

This col­li­sion between the archa­ic and the cut­ting-edge (the bal­lets are enhanced by visu­al effects) sees the direc­tor engaged in estab­lish­ing a new kind of expe­ri­ence, a ​‘total cin­e­ma’ in which dif­fer­ent forms of inspi­ra­tion – lit­er­a­ture, art, the­atre, music – come togeth­er to artic­u­late a sin­gu­lar extra­or­di­nary vision.

There is, of course, an extra fris­son in a film of Coppola’s that tack­les the themes of fam­i­ly, rival­ry and genius. Tetro speaks to the director’s own biog­ra­phy – his father was an award-win­ning com­pos­er and musi­cian; his moth­er an actress – but it is now Cop­po­la him­self who is the dom­i­nant fig­ure with an extend­ed fam­i­ly of artists.

Or per­haps that pater­nal fig­ure is the director’s dia­logue with his for­mer self. It is, after all, his own rep­u­ta­tion, not his father’s, that now haunts Coppola’s every move – his own past that is the dom­i­neer­ing force from which he’s seek­ing to escape.

Accord­ing­ly, while Tetro is a film of great pas­sions, it is sure­ly a more sym­pa­thet­ic and reflec­tive work than he would or could have made as a rebel­lious ado­les­cent. Telling­ly, when the broth­ers’ secret is revealed, it is Tetro’s regret, sad­ness and for­give­ness that linger, rather than Bennie’s rage and bitterness.

It is not only Coppola’s his­to­ry that is entwined with the film. Vin­cent Gal­lo brings a brood­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the role of Tetro, root­ed in his own image as the enfant ter­ri­ble of Hol­ly­wood. He approach­es the part with­out irony but gives free reign to that seduc­tive spark of volatil­i­ty. Framed by angu­lar planes of black and white light, Gal­lo seems every inch the roman­tic rebel, the uncom­pro­mis­ing vision­ary whose out­bursts of pas­sion are the stuff of legend.

In con­trast, Alden Ehren­re­ich is the film’s fresh face, a blank can­vas on which Tetro – and Cop­po­la – has indeli­bly imprint­ed his mark. This is an extra­or­di­nary debut from a 20-year-old who holds the screen like a born star. Ehren­re­ich is the per­fect foil for Gal­lo, off­set­ting his co-star’s pierc­ing inten­si­ty with sleepy-eyed beau­ty. With his boy­ish looks and mag­net­ic charis­ma, Ehren­re­ich will draw jus­ti­fi­able com­par­isons to a young Leonar­do DiCaprio, but in Coppola’s smoky black-and-white bohemia, James Dean seems the more res­o­nant touchstone.

Of course there are flaws. Tetro is caught some­where between pure art film and straight dra­ma, with­out going far enough in either direc­tion to suc­ceed entire­ly. The final act might char­i­ta­bly be described as ​‘oper­at­ic’ in its inten­si­ty, though ​‘melo­dra­mat­ic’ would fit the bill equal­ly well. In fact, you could take a pair of scis­sors to a good por­tion of the last half-hour and re-shape it into some­thing that felt truer to the tone of the film’s first half.

But any dis­ap­point­ments need to be tak­en in con­text. Cop­po­la is one of a gen­er­a­tion of direc­tors who came of age in the 1970s. They dreamed of re-mak­ing Hol­ly­wood in their own image, with small-scale art films and per­son­al visions. They suc­ceed­ed in ways they could nev­er have pre­dict­ed, but it was that very suc­cess that took them away from the films they want­ed to make.

Today, while Scors­ese retreats into genre, while Lucas plays dig­i­tal games on the Sky­walk­er Ranch, while Fried­kin and Bog­danovich fade away, Cop­po­la is here, now, mak­ing the kind of film he believes in. Maybe if the oth­er Movie Brats fol­lowed him they’d make a bet­ter film than Tetro. But they’re not, and they won’t. Cop­po­la can hold his head up. Because though you might not love the film he has made, you have to love the fact that he made it.